ON April 18, 2012, Russia and the world lost its leading expert on flyingfishes (Exocoetidae), cutlassfishes (Trichiuroidei), and other deep sea and pelagic fishes, and we lost a beloved colleague, Nik Parin of the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (Fig. 1). He survived a stroke in February 2006 and was in poor health, suffering from cancer until his death in Moscow. He is survived by his devoted wife Olga Vladimirovna Parina and his son Nikolai Nikolaiovich Parin and family with two grandchildren.
Nik was born on 21 November 1932 in Perm, Russia. He had two brothers and one sister. His father, Vasily Vasilievich Parin (1903–1971), was a prominent researcher in space medicine, an academician, a deputy minister for health care in the USSR, and vice-president of the Soviet Academy for Medical Science. In 1937, the family moved to Moscow but returned to...